We Tripped El Hadji Diouf

On February 5, 2011, T. Finn, a member of the comedy website Something Awful, posted a doctored animated GIF of Senegalese soccer player El Hadji Diouf being clobbered by an invisible opponent. His challenge to image-editing-savvy members was simple: visualize what tripped El Hadji Diouf. Over the next several weeks, more than a hundred remixed animated GIFs poured in. The cumulative result was one of the Web’s most “epic” Photoshop threads, highlighting the ease of moving-image manipulation and its proliferation as a natural extension of everyday online communication.

We Tripped El Hadji Diouf presents the most surprising, clever, and imaginative responses. These short videos were not created with commercial intentions or claims to fine art. Instead, their makers were using widely-available image-editing tools to participate in a humorous visual conversation and engage in playful one-upmanship.